Sorry, I didn't call for the role.
And I will have the.
In economic news, being hungry and not knowing where your next meal is coming from is the
definition of food insecurity.
Across Wisconsin, food pantries are seeing a major uptick in demand over the past year.
In some counties, triple digit increases, and it turns out college students experience
food insecurity at higher rates than the general population, with estimates putting students
between 33 to 51 percent food insecure compared to all U.S. adults at 9.8 percent.
At Northwood Technical College in Rice Lake, students are experiencing food insecurity
and now some help.
We turn to the college's president, John Will, and thanks very much for being here.
Glad to be here.
Thank you.
So, what do you see on your campuses in terms of food insecurity?
Well, we actually have some data from 2015, we did a study with the Hope Lab and then
a follow-up bit of research that showed that about 45 percent of our students were identifying
an issue with food insecurity and so that's the data that we're relying on and then we
also know that research shows that food insecurity is a barrier to completion in college.
And so we felt like we needed to take some action and actually in about 2019 had one
of our managers of enrollment services put together a plan to create a food pantry.
2019 was a pretty busy year.
You may remember and a lot of things started to happen in 2019 and so we didn't implement
that at that time but recently we were able to come up with a plan to start a food pantry
at a Rice Lake campus.
So how hard is it to see that food insecurity amongst your students?
Well, it's not very hard.
We have a lot of students who, there's a lot of data points that you can look at.
We have many students who receive Pell Grants which is the need-based federal grant program
and so we know we have students who are in need, some who are in poverty.
We also have students who are supporting families, many of them work part-time and can't work
full-time because they're going to school.
They've made that really important decision to try.
They're trying to go to school to get more education to provide a better life for them
and their families.
But it's a struggle financially and of course food is one of the basic things that they
need to purchase and so that's something that's a barrier to them being successful not only
for them but for their family and so given our connection with them, a food pantry seemed
like a great way to help them overcome that barrier.
So what kind of help did you get to run that food pantry then?
This is a really good story.
Technical colleges have been receiving private support.
I think in larger numbers in the last, I've been president for 10 years and we've seen
much more willingness to receive private support and at our college we received a $100,000
anonymous donation.
Still do not know who provided the funding and the only directive was to direct it towards
something that would help our students.
And so we have four campuses and each of them has a leadership team.
That leadership team got together and identified this as the place where the endowment that
that money established would be the most impactful and so they used it as sort of seed money
to get the food pantry going.
We're calling it blazes covered, blazes our mascot and that was a good way to brand it
and make it into a positive thing for our students and happy to say that it has seen
a successful launch.
I was going to ask, what kind of demand are you seeing for that pantry?
It's a little bit early to look at numbers or volume but we definitely see students accessing
it and I should mention, you know, it's like a lot of food pantries stacked with non-perishable
food items and even hygiene items for folks because those are some of the basic kind of
needs that people who are struggling with financial issues see and it's anonymous.
You walk in and can take what you need and then walk out.
So we know there's enough activity to need to restock it periodically but we'll evaluate
that more towards the end of the academic year here.
So you said your baseline started in kind of 2015 when you did that research about the
numbers of students who might be food insecure.
Is it your sense that it's gotten worse with kind of the cost of food now and the cost
of housing?
Yeah, I think, you know, that's maybe a little bit anecdotal but I do think a lot of people
are struggling with some of those basic, you know, sort of those costs that relate to necessities
and we've seen that increase.
It's reflected in a couple of different ways.
We see students going more part-time.
That's starting to turn around a little bit this year but on the heels of the pandemic
we saw a greater percentage of students going part-time.
And that's often so that they can hold down more hours.
And so we're starting to see that turn around a little bit now but that's definitely been
something that we've noticed and wanted to try to proactively address and alleviate.
So when you received the $100,000 gift was it ever a question but that helping students
who were hungry was the first priority?
Well, we've got a lot of great things that we can use funding for but that's a pretty
basic need for everybody and, you know, managing the logistics of a food pantry takes not only
initial seed money but a commitment from our existing employees on campus.
And so once we worked that out I think that was a pretty easy decision.
Alright, John Will, thanks very much.
Thank you.
For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin visit our website at pbswisconsin.org and
then click on the news tab.
That's our program for tonight.
I'm Puerto Rico Freibert.
Have a good weekend.